SOUNDTRACK: FLORENCE + THE MACHINE-Tiny Desk Concert #795 (October 16, 2018).
Florence + the Machine has slowly won me over. When I first heard their (her) songs, I wasn’t impressed. I felt there was something missing.
I don’t know if I changed my mind on those early songs, or if she did something more in her layering but I suddenly found her songs intense and really powerful.
Florence Welch and her band play three songs at the Tiny Desk. I have so much grown to love the full production that I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it as much when stripped down. For the Tiny Desk it’s just her on vocals, with a guitars a synth an d a harp! And man her voice has just become a force unto itself–she could sing a capella and it would be great. But the backing vocals add an amazing and unexpected punch.
She starts the show with the lovely “June.” It begins with her voice and some harp notes.
Florence performed with her eyes closed. Within seconds of hearing her first note, the raw power of her un-amplified voice was chilling.
Then the guitar joins in and the lovely “oh ooh, oh ooh, woah” fill in the gaps perfectly. Even something as simple as Florence’s hand clap add an interesting percussive element to the climax of the song.
It’s impossible to talk about Florence without her backing band. Tom Monger adds exquisite ethereal textures to the songs with his stunning mastery of the pedal harp. Hazel Mill’s backing vocals and anthemic power chords on the keys accentuate the poignancy of the lyrics at just the right moments. And Robert Ackroyd’s rhythmic, steady acoustic guitar drives the music forward.
The second song “Patricia” builds slowly over its time. The harp plays a kind of haunting melody that is accentuated by two almost sinister deep notes. The song feels like it’s heading to an end after about three minutes, but that’s just the middle section. After a big smile, the hand claps continue as the song grows louder and louder as they sing “it’s such a wonderful thing to love.”
The intensity of the musicality is almost secondary to the message in her lyrics. Ear-worm melodies coupled with repetitive phrases create universal, awe-inspiring anthems.
Her nervousness was palpable and stood in stark contrast to her fully produced stage show. “I’m sorry I’m shy,” Florence Welch told the crowd of NPR family and friends gathered for her Tiny Desk performance. “If this was a big gig, I’d probably be climbing all over here and running around.”
The final song is the one that won me over, “Ship to Wreck.” She reveals her humorous side when she says, “We haven’t practiced this. It could be terrible. Especially for you.”
I love the hugeness of the recorded version of the song. This version replaces some of the power with more interesting subtleties in the harmonies and the lovely melodies. It’s a striking version of the song.
[READ: November 28, 2018] “A Diamond to Cut New York”
The December 3, 2018 issue of the New Yorker was an archival issue, meaning that every story was taken from an earlier issue. The range is something like 1975-2006, which is odd since the New Yorker dates back so much longer. Although the fiction pieces are at least from the 1940s and 1950s.
This particular piece is a collection of vignettes from Dawn Powell’s diaries which range from 1933 to 1963 (she died in 1965).
I have wanted to read Dawn Powell for years and yet I keep finding other books that jump in front of me first. As I read this I wondered if maybe Powell isn’t for me, as I really didn’t know what in the world she was talking about for many of these entries. but there were many glimmers of the wit that Powell is known for poking through.
There’s also the problem of context. I have virtually none for most of these entries, so even if there are clever comments, I probably have no idea. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 